International Military – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affected many things in the world, including geopolitics. The anxiety of many countries also arose when Russia carried out its military operations against its own neighbor, Ukraine. In addition, the West began to speculate that China could take military action against Taiwan.
Apart from Taiwan, this could also threaten the security of a Western ally, namely Japan. Quoted by the Eurasian Times, Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, Commander of the Pacific Air Force, recently argued about the right weapon to fight China if that country did so.
According to him, it would be much more appropriate to deploy an “Attritable” drone against China than a high-end stealth fighter jet like the F-35 or F-22. He revealed this at an online interaction hosted by the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies.
“Attritable” is a design feature that trades reliability and maintainability for low-cost weaponry. In addition, he can also be reused, before finally being disposed of.
One of Attritable’s weapons is the XQ-58 Valkyrie. Quoted from Airforce Technology, the XQ-58A Valkyrie is a high-range subsonic unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Valkyrie was developed by Kratos Defense & Security Solutions in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
This low-cost unmanned aerial combat vehicle is designed for deployment in long-range surveillance, reconnaissance and combat missions. Moreover, it is used to provide the war fighters with maximum operational flexibility and utility.
It is intended to serve as an escort aircraft or unmanned wingman to manned fighter aircraft in warfare. Wilsbach went on to say that China’s ability to defend its country is very strong.
China has a very strong Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) system in the East and South China Seas. “That will give you an advantage because they will use their resources to shoot things you don’t care about they shoot down.
So, that would be a capacity I’m really interested in because we could go into the future to be able to collect targets for them to shoot but the ones we want them to shoot. What follows can be air power or ammunition that creates the effect we choose,” said General Wilsbach. In this case, the US has squared off to prevent possible Chinese military aggression and threats from North Korea.
The US has reportedly decided to send more fighter jets to Australia, including F-22 Raptors, F-35 Lightning II, and B2 stealth bombers in November last year.
